There's a business term called MECE - mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive. It's just a way to break things down. You can break one thing down into multiple other things, MECE-style. There might be a bunch of different ways to do that, you just pick one.
So for instance, I started with the statement, "I have a happy, fulfilling life." Then I tried to think of the 3-5 things that were each necessary and collectively sufficient, and without overlap, in order for that to feel like a true statement.
It breaks down in a somewhat predictable fashion from there. For me, there was health, financial security, social, purpose, etc.
Then for each of those, you do it again. Visually, I had the "fulfilling life" statement on top, branching down from there. So like an upside down pyramid. As you go down, the statements get more personalized and actionable.
Over the years I've found that the lower levels change more frequently than the upper levels. Like, staying up to date on a particular Anki deck used to feel necessary to justify the statement above it. Now it doesn't.
It's also pretty impossible to always keep the entire DAG up to date and perfectly reflecting all my priorities in my life. Life's too big. (Or maybe I just don't have the right UI/UX.) But doing it once gave a lot of perspective in terms of telling the difference between what's really important to me, and what I thought was important but really wasn't.
So for instance, I started with the statement, "I have a happy, fulfilling life." Then I tried to think of the 3-5 things that were each necessary and collectively sufficient, and without overlap, in order for that to feel like a true statement.
It breaks down in a somewhat predictable fashion from there. For me, there was health, financial security, social, purpose, etc.
Then for each of those, you do it again. Visually, I had the "fulfilling life" statement on top, branching down from there. So like an upside down pyramid. As you go down, the statements get more personalized and actionable.
Over the years I've found that the lower levels change more frequently than the upper levels. Like, staying up to date on a particular Anki deck used to feel necessary to justify the statement above it. Now it doesn't.
It's also pretty impossible to always keep the entire DAG up to date and perfectly reflecting all my priorities in my life. Life's too big. (Or maybe I just don't have the right UI/UX.) But doing it once gave a lot of perspective in terms of telling the difference between what's really important to me, and what I thought was important but really wasn't.